Sunday, February 24, 2013

How We are Applying Leadership Education for All Ages and Stages

Leadership Education easily applies to all aspect of our
lives.It affects what I do as a mother,
it affects how I communicate with others, and it applies to what I purchase,
how I apply the principles of the Gospel, and how I educate my children.At the writing of this article we have been
doing home education the Thomas Jefferson way eight years with nine unique
children.I’ve learned so much along the
way and feel much more confident in this stage of home ed than how I felt eight
years ago.

Oliver DeMille says you should start preparing for Scholar Phase
when your child is in Core phase.You
need to always been thinking very far ahead.When the child is in Scholar Phase you should be thinking about Depth
phase.When we started I had pulled my
older three kids out of school and they were ages 9, 8, and 7 and I had three
other kids ages 5, 3, and a baby.Fast
forward to today those kids are in Scholar Phase: Self-Directed, Apprentice, Practice
Scholars.The next three kids are in
Love of Learning phase and I have three other kids who are all in Core.I guess you could say I’m knee deep in
Leadership Education.

Remembering the KEY
YOU not THEM, I’ll start with moi.

I run several home businesses because that is part of my
mission to “help the sisters”.It is
also very fulfilling for me to have something larger than myself that I am
working on.I run the HomemakingCottage, the Enrichment Cottage online, sell Essential Oils, and help heal
emotions with Energy Healing.I’m also
working on my scholar phase and taking several courses whenever I can to education
myself.How does this look?Tuesday’s and Thursday’s are my “work” days
and I spend 6-8 hours with breaks in between working.The internet happens mostly in the evenings
when I can squeeze it in and that goes for the Essential Oils business.I also spend several hours a day reading or
listening to books.I listen to books or
my favorite podcasts (Alex Jones, Nothing But Truth, Focal Point) in the car.I read when I wake up and before going to
bed.I take many snatches of time throughout
the day to read as well.I also take
time to exercise and I get to the gym four times a week.

The classes I’m currently squeezing in are Foundations of Liberty with Dr. Shanon Brooks.He comes
to Colorado every other month for a day long lecture.My kids are in Founder’s Commonwealth school
on Wednesdays.I’m taking the adult
Scholar class there.I take Oliver
DeMille’s online classes whenever possible.My husband and I head an Emergency Preparation group and we have classes
related to this once a month.I’m involved
in two book groups a month and I enjoy doing a Great Courses class when I can.

Our Home Library---one view

Classics Not
Textbooks

When I first began Leadership Education I had no idea how
many classic children’s books there were.Well, I had no idea how many CLASSICS there were.Within the first couple of years, I found a
Book Mentor.She is still my book mentor
even while I mentor others in creating their own home libraries.She is still several steps ahead in that
area. Additionally, I also use the book
The Well-Trained Mind as a guide for classic books for kids.We have two libraries for our family, a
children’s area upstairs and the main library downstairs.

When I want to focus on music, we go to books, not
textbooks.When I want to teach the
children grammar, there are many great books, not textbooks.Math books are bounteous and when they are
older they read from the mathematicians.We do use a few textbooks for math, but they are the side note not the
focus.

Here are a few books
in each area for the different phases for examples:

Musicians:

All: The Fandex Family Field Guide Composers

Core and Love of
Learning:

Mozart by Ann Rachlin

George Handel by Mike Venezia

Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin by Lloyd Moss

Scholars:

Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie

A Taste for the Classics by Patrick Kavanaugh

Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

Grammar

All ages:

Up, Up and Way: A book about Adverbs by Ruth Heller

Mine, All Mine: A book about Pronouns by Ruth Heller

A Cache of Jewels and other Collective Nouns by Ruth Heller

Scholar:
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Math

Core and Love of
Learning:

Monster Musical Chairs
All of the Sir Cumference books

The Action of Subtraction by Brian P. Cleary

Scholars:

String, Straight-edge and Shadow by Julie E. Diggins

The Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe

The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio

Because classics also define other media besides books,
we enjoy Kahn Academy online or on the ipad app as well as TED talks. (Like this one:)

We have about an hour a day (and it’s not always first thing
in the morning, although that is ideal) when we do Power of an Hour (see Donna
Goff’s site).I spend time reading from
our Core Book (scriptures), we do the Pledge of a Allegiance, sing songs, say
prayer, and read one or more of these books as well as a classic and another
educational book.Right now we’re
finishing the Hobbit and the book Transformed: How Everyday Things Are Made by Bill
Slavin.

Mentors Not
Professors

Based on the interests of my children and our family’s
vision, the children have several mentors aside from me.They are for: cello, violin, viola, and
piano, sign language, math and science, and two of my children have a reading
mentor, ballroom dancing mentor, and several other mentors.

As much as it sounds inviting for me to want to go back
to school for a degree, in all reality that isn’t what I really want.I think about Nat Bowditch in the book Carry
on, Mr. Bowditch and his passion for learning and teaching himself so much.Whenever I want to learn something new, I don’t
register in college, I find someone who can teach me or look online to find a
course (via internet, DVD, or tutorials) that can teach me.

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"A Thomas Jefferson Education looks different in every home—and yours is no exception! Each family, whether large or small, has unique needs, ideas, and traditions, but sometimes, as parents, we try so hard to follow the “right way to do TJEd,” that we lose sight of those things in our homes that work! You have to develop our own style of TJEd—one designed specifically for your home."